For over a decade now, my cross-cultural research program has focused on cultural variations in perceptual and cognitive processes between North Americans (European Canadians and European Americans) and Japanese. Through this research, we have demonstrated that while North Americans tend to show an analytic pattern of attention, selectively allocating their attention to central pieces of information in visual scenes, Japanese show a more holistic pattern of attention, spreading their attention between central and background visual information. Some findings in this line of research have also indicated that such cultural differences are present in our artistic expression and design. Our research team assumes that the source of these culturally divergent patterns of attention is attributable to culturally unique ways of understanding the world (i.e. our worldviews). While these findings have been well established through our line of research, little research has been done on the developmental trajectories of such culturally unique patterns. During my stay at the Kokoro Research Center, I will investigate 7- to 10-year old children’s patterns of conversation with their caregivers, attempting to answer to the following questions: “At which point of life course do children start to show culturally unique response patterns?” and “How are such culturally unique patterns of attention transmitted from caregivers to their children?” 　――Takahiko Masuda, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta